Check out GameEscape Online

Monday, October 31, 2011

The Haunted Sawmill - Merrill WI

This past weekend, I, along with my family were treated to a journey through Merrill's first(and hopefully annual) Haunted Sawmill. A local chapter of boyscouts turned an old abandoned factory in town into a really excellent haunted house!

For many years I spent looking at the old Semco/Northern Specialty building just outside of my parents house. I've made little film projects, tried peaking in windows, and even turned the outside front door into Joker's secret hideout with my friends on the set of JPD's "Batman: The Enemy Within'! I always looked at it like it was such a waste of space! Why is this giant factory just sitting here untouched?

Then finally someone stood up to do something about it! Troop 599, a local Boyscout group put together a great Haunted House that features over 30 actors, tons of great costumes, eerie effects, a moving room, and took about 6 months to put together! On Saturday night, my two oldest boys and I sat in line for just over 3 hours (8:30-11:30pm) and we finally got into the door, for what we found to be the scare of our lives!! When we walked to pick up our tickets and get in line, I would say there was easily 400 or more people standing before us. The guy holding the tickets said it was about a two hour wait. O_O - the crazy thing was, they sold tickets till about 10:30pm... So I would guess they will be doing Haunted tours till at least 1 or 2 am!

The most impressive parts of the tour would be the moving room, the great makeup, and of course the great Actors that brought this event to life!

Another really great feature was the line for the Sawmill! While you wait in a creepy corn maze type line for the scare of your life, masked murderers, ghouls, and monsters of epic size were wondering about on the roof, peaking out windows and even coming into the line to....erm.. visit.

I just can't recommend this enough for anyone looking to go out this Halloween night. The Building itself takes about 10-15 minutes to get through, the scares are pretty intense, and you really feel like you get your money's worth. I really hope they do this again next year as we were all really freaked out!!

1 comment:

The brains behind this fright is a Mr. Jerry Hersil. His son is in the Scouts. I remember him doing homemade monsters in front of his house, I think he had a story about it in the paper. Hes got a talent for this.